


60 for 60  ficlets:  60 words for each of the 60 Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories

by tweedisgood



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: VERY Short Stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:46:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 60
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tweedisgood/pseuds/tweedisgood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally posted at the wonderful Sherlock60 LJ community. 60 word ficlets, each  based on a canon ACD Sherlock Holmes short story or novel.</p><p> Ratings vary: mostly G but up to R</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Abbey Grange: Alcohol

Wine: the curse of the Brackenstalls and a blessing to the observant detective. Whisky: the downfall of Henry Watson and a fate graven onto the case of a pocket watch and the memory of a brother. Brandy: sweet balm after a hundred wintry days at the chase and a thousand dark days at the edge of a waterfall, looking down.


	2. The Beryl Coronet: Sunbeam

A sunbeam, bent to the will of man. The perfect daughter for one who had dreamed of a girl-child all his own. She would never stray into the world, never know true maturity, but be instead the housebound blessing of his old age.

He had all he wanted. He never thought, not for a second, of what _she_ might desire.


	3. Black Peter: Choice

They asked (oh, not in words, but their eyes asked) why did I endure it so many years; why did I not think of a mother's duty to my child?

We had our pride, I answer. Pride, and the strange consolation of sharing everything, bad and good. What good? Why, sir: not dying in the workhouse, as my parents did.


	4. The Blanched Soldier: Critic

“I have cast my eye over the Adventure of the Blanched Soldier, Holmes. Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it.”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed. Either developments come as genuine surprises to me, or I conceal them for the sake of a ‘meretricious finale’. Not both. Character consistency lies at the heart of believable drama. It is as well you stuck to detection.”


	5. The Blue Carbuncle: Amateur

Ryder. Complete amateur. Now, if that‘d been me, I’d have just shoved the rock up the chimney and got Cusack to collect once the coast was clear. Simple, quick, not at all ‘whimsical’: no points of interest for Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I’m an old jail bird; it’s as good as a University in there. John Horner, Doctor of Philtching.


	6. The Boscombe Valley Mystery: Circumstantial Evidence

“Watson, handling your works all these years has made me something of a detective as well as a doctor. Holmes had better watch out for his health. A man who shuns women of his own class is in clear danger of contracting disease from loose females.”

“Consider, Sir Arthur: circumstantial evidence. ‘If you shift your point of view a little...’”


	7. The Bruce-Partington Plans:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Re-mix on the words of ACD: The other Holmes brother

Gracefully whittled to willow elegance by starvation and cocaine, there was a suggestion of bohemianism in the figure. Above this, a face so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-grey eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that at every glance one remembered both the beautiful body and the dominant mind.


	8. The Cardboard Box: Waiting

I had been waiting for someone like him for so long – perhaps all my life. To be treasured, though he use me hard – even abuse me. To be made a prize of, boasted of as worth more than the value others had given me: well worth lying unstrung on a dusty shelf at old man Rubenstein’s for all those months.


	9. Charles Augustus Milverton: Wordless

Watson expresses some surprise that I do not consider the victims foolish to leave written evidence of their indiscretions. He approves of my pity, pity that may excuse even stony-faced murder.

I place a grateful hand on his shoulder, fidelity and affection steadfast in his answering smile. I pity them, rather, that they need mere words to say their love.


	10. The Copper Beeches: Saviour

Yes, Sherlock Holmes came to our house. Quick, little Miss Hunter was in danger. I still dine out on the story: my sister's escape, Father's disfigurement, Mother's vocation. Then my rise to eminence from the ashes of my family.

The fool ripped away the cord strung across the stairs, without comment: saving the weak from the strong. Unnatural. Illogical. Dangerous.


	11. The Creeping Man: Roots

He writes that I had no roots. In fact, I had one: a deep tap that threatened to suck nourishment from the healthy root system of a sturdy, flourishing English oak. Time to pluck it up, any gardener would say.

That offending plant would wither into straw now, but it was a desiccated old stick to begin with. Small loss. 


	12. The Crooked Man: Inequality

In every pair, must it be so? One, more stricken with love than the other: an eternal beggar of largesse from a greater soul, the leavings of the feast of life?

If so, then what when a third is added? Bachelor ties cut away by matrimony, itself only to be pierced by the eternal lure of “half-sporting, half-intellectual pleasure”?


	13. The Dancing Men: Knowledge

His grey eyes are heavy-lidded, seeming half asleep as I put out the lamp and secure the door. His smile is serene, his movements unhurried.

Yet as I trace the shape of him through his small-clothes - swelling, rising, straining eagerly against my seeking hand - I, who know Sherlock Holmes better than anyone ever has, can tell that he is...profoundly excited.


	14. The Devil's Foot: Ordeal

By this trial, men have vainly sought to prove their innocence when arraigned for crimes against gods or men. Holmes had often stood accused at the court of human feeling (with myself both prosecutor and judge) - of being a brain without a heart, of cold egotism. His words outside that cottage door were a cogent defence.

I let him off.


	15. The Dying Detective: Monograph

“When you write your doubtless definitive monograph on Malingering, Holmes, you might make it part of a series.”

“Oh, yes?”

“In my _mediocre_ literary experience, a unifying theme attracts a loyal audience. May I suggest Mendacity, Callousness and Egotism make up the quartet of arts in which you are an expert?”

“Ah. Perhaps _next_ Friday for dinner at Simpson’s, then?”


	16. The Empty House: Tree Worship

From ancient times, men have split branches, left tokens of themselves in the gash and waited to be healed as the tree healed.

I left myself in the gash where water split rocks and sky, not expecting to find healing.

The sacred tree I thought cut down was merely hidden from mortal sight. I had but to wait three years.


	17. The Engineer's Thumb: Recommendation

“I not infrequently gain patients by way of recommendation from fellow-sufferers, sometimes anonymously, and one never knows quite what to expect. One chap yesterday – frankly, Holmes, I doubted there was anything _physically_ wrong with him. His chief ‘ill’ was that he is utterly friendless. I’m no alienist.”

“Ah, Watson. It was not your professional expertise which prompted the... _my_ recommendation.”


	18. The Final Problem: Nervous Man

I have lived by my wits, on my nerves. If I speak of a preference for a placid life, I deceive myself and my greatest - my only - friend; he surely knows it.

I will die by my wits, nerves tightly strung. I cannot live without them. Not yet. Perhaps, if ever he is free to join me permanently: perhaps then.


	19. The Five Orange Pips:Beaten

"...four times - three times by men, once by a woman."

Against my successes, feathers against lead: aye, perhaps. Yet each one weighs upon my mind waking and sleeping, goading me to rise to the next challenge. The next round of single combat against an adversary who is named Failure, who wears many masks but, underneath the same face: my face.


	20. The Gloria Scott: Birmingham

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor Character Death

The City crept up on us, mile by mile: in the distance then close at hand, wreathed in steam and crowded with industry.

The illness crept up on her, thread by thread: crowding her throat then closing it, in spite of steamy rooms and industrious doctors.

Death crept up on us, hour by hour: it overtook her in the night.


	21. The Golden Pince-Nez: Palimpsest

The _scriptio inferior_ of every crime, the first record of the facts, lurks under the surface evidence, scraped away by too-ready assumption.

To take things at face value, like the good Inspector Hopkins, is a mistake I take pains not to make.

I found no particular interest in this morning's manuscript:but to decipher the original text proved invaluable practice.


	22. The Greek Interpreter: Atavism

“There were rumours about my great-great-grandfather and his butler, whispered behind hands. My great aunt ran off with her paid companion and lived many happy years with her in Llandudno.”

“Nature, then?”

“Rather, long practice noting each and every one of your excellent qualities and handsome features - resulting in a logical conclusion that I shouldn’t let you get away.”


	23. The Hound of the Baskervilles: Belgian Masters

"Remarkable: I have seen lettuces and peaches those exact shades on the barrow of the Spitalfields Strangler."

"Holmes, it is supposed to represent the ephemeral nature of human life, wilting day by day."

"It’s an arrangement of fruit and vegetables, Watson, realistically rendered. Why complicate matters?"

Sherlock Holmes did not know much about art: but he knew what he liked.


	24. A Case of Identity: Quite Contrary

Mary, Mary. How contrary of you to be so determined to fall in love. How convenient for your well-provided-for, stupid, _ancient_ mama and myself.

How much more convenient that I established a precedent for frequent "trips to France". In fact, decadence flourishes as near as Hackney.

The truth is you would have been _far_ too old for my tastes, Mary dear.


	25. The Illustrious Client: Gentleman

"Miss Winter" he said: polite as you like, but distant; though I think it wasn't my rough voice or gaudy clothes that kept us strangers. He’s a proper gentleman.

Now, here I sit in my cell, happy to pay my small fee for that monster’s downfall. Mr Holmes got off scot free, I heard. Well, he’s a gentleman, ain’t he?


	26. The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax: Room

I smiled when I read those words in The Strand.

Single all my sainted days for his sake? Really, Phillip. I could have forgiven much in your past but for that common, manly arrogance: to think that a woman must put a man at the centre of her world. Why, there would scarce be any room for anything of interest.


	27. His Last Bow: Sportsman

“In England we call it the Great Game, Herr Von Bork: a contest of wits and of strategy. You may console yourself with having been bested by the finest sportsmen we could put up against you.”

“Sportsmen?! Surely, only you...”

“My sports are boxing and fencing. I work as a team, with a sole teammate, only at this particular Game."


	28. The Lion's Mane: Missing

I do not miss London, not any more. I can breathe here, walk for miles without seeing a soul. I do not even miss the work, somewhat to my surprise.

I miss a gruff, cheerful voice; footsteps on the stairs; the stub of a Bradley’s cigarette in the grate.

I have new friends. But even Stackhurst calls me ‘Mr’ Holmes.


	29. The Mazarin Stone: Vivat

“You won't die in your bed, Holmes”. I told him it did not matter.

Dissembler that I am: I want to live as long a life as the next fellow. So long as the next fellow is John Watson, and he is content – nay, eager – to share its adventures until our very last day. Vivat Semper Amicitia.


	30. The Missing Three Quarter: Partisan

Despite my protests, I know something of teamwork and its sacrifices: have I not abandoned my chemical solace because of Watson's hatred for it? And if, in truth, I haven't the least idea what our client is talking about, I see clearly his determination that our University prevail against the time-honoured foe. After so many years, old loyalties still beckon.


	31. The Noble Batchelor: Secret

I shall never speak of it again. I owe him that: not to remind him of drunken, shocking, forbidden words, a clumsy hand that he would never, save for the fatal admixture of drink and cocaine, have dared to put on my knee, that last night before my wedding.

“We can’t command our love, but we can our actions.”


	32. The Musgrave Ritual: Inheritance

From father to son, inheritance: a ritual; a treasure; a great and ancient house; a seat in Parliament.

Another father, another son: myself. Talents aplenty, but why should I be given the meanest field for their exercise?

Musgrave's mother was an earl's daughter; mine, a Welsh housemaid. His father died honoured, in bed; mine, a thief in his master's cellar.


	33. The Naval Treaty: Mean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: If you think I might be being a bit unfair to Woking: in my defence, I grew up there. It's a dump.

A mean railway town; bare heath whose only fruits are the overblown red-brick villas of the nouveaux riches.

A mean little crime to go withal. Money before affection; a lie wearing a smiling brother's face.

Miss Harrison, however - a stout heart and a valiant. Lucky Mr Percy Phelps, to find the inner strength he lacks amid those prizes and preferments.

.


	34. The Norwood Builder: 1950

The doctors now say it is tobacco, and not my old friend asthma, that has robbed me of the breath even to rise from my bed. Well, I have had a long, full life, and I had a cigarette once from a man without whom I should be long dead and disgraced.

Perhaps, there is always a price to pay.


	35. The Priory School: Post Restante

She never wrote to me from France; neither to home nor to school. Small wonder, I believed that note from her 'agent', saying my father had forbidden it. He was not a man to forgive a broken promise.

Wilder was a clever liar; he knew my heart and, seemingly, hers. Even after I was lost and found, no letters. Mother...


	36. The Red Circle: Self-Sufficiency

Mrs Warren hasn't quite my long experience as a landlady. Had I been in the room, I should have guessed her tenant wasn't a gentleman quite as quickly as Mr Holmes did.

Doing everything for himself? Why, a certain world-renowned detective wouldn't know what to do with a bar of laundry soap even if it hit him in the face.


	37. The Red-Headed League: Omne Ignotum

In the beginning, when still a mystery, I found him merely intriguing. While he was my friend and colleague, there was exhilaration and exasperation both. When he was gone from me, he was a blessed memory.

Now that I know him as well as one soul, one heart - one body - may know another: now, he is truly magnificent.


	38. The Reigate Squires: Recognition

Colonel Hayter has a gun dog, black as night. It leaps upon pheasants he has brought down, pinning them by one fluttering, once-soaring wing, bringing them limp and lifeless to its master.

In the beast's eyes I see infinite patience and deadly watchfulness: the mirror image of another black dog that follows after my successes until they, too, lie lifeless.


	39. The Resident Patient: Catalept

“Alas, Watson, the occasion is not fit for the Strand. It does not qualify, you see.”

“Qualify?”

“Devoured by that Scylla of triviality which you describe in your preface to our latest adventure. I was young, I was poor: the client, old and rich. I searched her cellar whilst she fetched the doctor, and found her cat.”


	40. The Retired Colourman: Ambition

He's gone. Left London for good to hide away in the country: says he's tired of crime.

And here's me, ready to make 14, Lorrimore Road the most famous address for detection in the twentieth century.

But I won't. He was there first, and last; he had a friend and storyteller like no other. He'll never really leave Baker Street.


	41. A Scandal in Bohemia: Unforeseen Consequences

“The second victim?”

“Servant out of a situation. So young. It's a rum case, Mr. Holmes: starting to look like the Whitechapel horrors over again. And as you cleared those up...”

“What clues?”

“To the killer? Nothing; but the girl left her trunk behind in that filthy lodging house as surety for payment. Mary Jane Parker." 


	42. The Second Stain: Trivial

It is poorly disguised, that tale. Four friends have already asked me if I am Lady Hilda. My husband angrily demands “the truth”.

Trivial? Mr Holmes, if women's conduct still appears so to you, consider this. For what faults - that in men are excused as not worth serious attention - are we even now, summarily judged and condemned?


	43. Shoscombe Old Place: Unwanted Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Note: As has been pointed out, Shoscombe Old Place was the last published (April 1927) in serial form of the Canon Holmes stories. ACD died in 1930. But what if we are playing The Game?_

“There will be no more stories now, but what a gift he left you. He made you immortal, Holmes.”

“An unwelcome prospect, Sir Arthur, I can assure you.”

“Come, now, be a little grateful. Men have fought wars for reputation. You truly wish it otherwise? Why?"

“Simplicity itself. A legacy cannot be enjoyed with the giver.”


	44. The Sign of Four: Since Men are in  a Transitional Condition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _“since Nature ordains that the existence of the race can only be preserved by gross appetites inherited from our ancestors, the animals, it is obvious that men should refine them as far as they are able....passions are sanctified by marriage; blended with the pure affections, their coarseness disappears; their violence is appeased; they become the ministers of conjugal and parental love” **William Winwood Reade: The Martyrdom of Man.**_

And for those of us who will never marry? Who _can_ never marry, else we deny the deepest truths of body and soul? However pure our affections, nothing can sanctify what we desire. Nature's violence done on us, not by us, is not appeased. Perhaps in some far, fair, unshackled future. Until then, for me there remains the cocaine bottle.


	45. Silver Blaze: Fish Out of Water

I could not have been more surprised had Holmes suggested to Mrs Straker that he had once met her on the moon.

From time to time since, I have dreamt of Holmes at a garden party - interrogating the waiters and loudly deducing the occupations and peccadilloes of his fellow guests. I wake in a sweat as from a nightmare. Terrifying.


	46. The Six Napoleons: Dreadful Business

“That should keep them guessing, Holmes.”

“My dear fellow, stop teasing your readers with these preposterous details of imaginary crimes. The Abernettys are our neighbours; they ought not to become notorious merely to serve your pawky sense of humour. People will find out the truth and begin to think that you make every one of my cases up.”


	47. The Solitary Cyclist: The Settled Order of Nature

The deduction was an easy one, though amusing. I noticed Watson covertly inspecting his face in the hall mirror before leaving for Farnham.

When he returned, he bore the signs of visiting the barber there.

His moustache, which in some lights has indeed more a Titian than a sandy tinge, had been bleached.

Miss Smith had chalked up another admirer.


	48. The Speckled Band: Vagabonds

I heard the gossip, aye, and had the story read to me from the Strand.

Still, I judge as I find, and Doctor Roylott never had his gamekeeper shoot at us just for showing our faces; never looked on our women as whores; shared my fire and my pipe as if I were a human being and not an animal.


	49. The Stockbroker's Clerk: My Innings

If the City of London is a microcosm of the world, and some say it is, how like the appointment of a clerk is the foundation of a friendship. Providence plunges a hand into the heap and takes the first that comes. That day in the Criterion Bar, it took Watson. I cannot imagine feeling better pleased with its selection.


	50. A Study in Scarlet: A Hundred Years Hence...

I will not be remembered by the children I brought safely into this world, nor by the families of patients I saved.

Say my name and two other names will always be next on your lips, just as on that brass plate on the wall of the glittering Criterion Bar. 

Nonetheless, immortality on other men's coat tails is still immortality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a Criterion kick, I'm aware - I actually visited it the week in between writing this and the last one, obviously left an impression...


	51. The Sussex Vampire: A Year at Sea

This ship is hell. I am beaten, openly and in secret, for weaknesses I cannot help; mocked for my girlish looks. Mocked...and worse. Far worse.

Patience is my master. Four months until I am home. I have learned so many new, many devious, vicious, drawn-out ways to be cruel to one who, for years yet, will be weaker than myself.


	52. The Problem of Thor Bridge: Greener Grass

Reader, I married him. Then I discovered that a rich and ruthless man of business will say and do whatever is needed to gain a contract. Once he has won, only the bare ink and paper of ownership concern him. The resource is his to enjoy, exploit, exhaust... and grow as tired of, in time, as any other fulfilled deal.


	53. The Three Gables: Sense of Smell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Victorian homophobia in response to Holmes being a racist arse.

Sure was a bad thing 'bout Perkins. Him knowin' about it, leastways. Or else, for those two jibes about how I smell, I'd 'a dealt him a blow about what he smells of. Spunk and shame, Masser Holmes, spunk and shame. Tell that to your doctor friend; then see if an' he'd raise a poker for you, or against you.


	54. The Three Garridebs: Influence

“I see Doyle is to be knighted, Holmes.”

“I suppose his mother insisted. I am fortunate that you made no such protest, my dear Watson.”

“As you very well know, there are two reasons for that: one, you wouldn't have listened to me; two, you didn't even tell me until afterwards.”

“It slipped my mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, folks. All the angsty, shippy potential and I went for the humour. The conjuction of dates (ACD was knighted in October 1902, this story is set in June of that year) and my personal headcanon for the Holmes and Doyle relationship was irresistible.


	55. The Three Students: Mental, not Physical

You are mistaken if you think only the thrill of the chase, the gathering of scattered, seeming-random clues, is of interest to me. 

I am not my readers, Holmes. For their sake I write of moonlight and masks, of footprints in the clay.

 _My_ pleasure is your grey eyes alive with excitement, your great mind at work and at play.


	56. The Man with the Twisted Lip: Self-made Man

So, back to hack work and making ends meet. Farewell Lee, parties, polite society and respect. You must make your own dresses now, my dear, and next year disguise them to look new.

And like any self-made man when disaster strikes, I must begin again: disguise myself anew, find some other field in which pennies may become pounds.


	57. The Valley Of Fear: By Any Other Name

“Birdy Edwards. What a curious nickname, Holmes. From his clear-sightedness, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

“I wonder what nickname I might come up with for you. Your given name can be a little off-putting. Something shorter, more friendly...”

“Name _me_ for a bird, Watson, and you are likely to find yourself regarded as a worm. A juicy one.”


	58. The Veiled Lodger: Definition Wanted

As every individual has a characteristic handshake: so too, a distinctive gait. Mrs Merrilow waddled; I pounce, Watson...

Hmm. I would know his foot-fall from any other's, but am hard-pressed to define it. I suspect a word has yet to be coined for a pace in which integrity, curiosity, twenty-five years of Ship's tobacco and regrettable flights of romanticism combine.


	59. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge: Ritual

Before attempting anything of importance, potent herbs are smoked; sacred music may be played; holy texts consulted. Symbolic but willing sacrifice of self and companion to danger and death is pledged.

Magic and the 'scientific' art of detection, the pursuit of true justice beyond the eye of man, are not so far apart as you might think, Mr Holmes.


	60. The Yellow Face: Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And....done!
> 
> Warning: character death.

I told you I would miss you, three weeks ago when we knew this day would come soon. You scoffed, said you knew me better. That I was made of sterner stuff: although you smiled a soft and secret smile. swiftly gone.

You were wrong, my dear Holmes, but you cannot hear me whisper “Norbury” in your ear.


End file.
